folks, we're closing out our series on Weird Medieval shit with a few quick hitters of weirdness that we haven't gotten to yet. so we bounce around to a few of them before ending it where the Middle Ages probably ended: the Fall of Constantinople. we talk about Joan of Arc, our beloved Holy Roman Empire, Angkor Wat, the rise of Islam as a world religion, and, finally, the broken Theodosian Walls and the end of an era.

folks, we're back with part 6 of our series on Weird Medieval shit and we start out in the Americas where the late Medieval Incan Empire was the most land of contrasts empire in all of history in order to survive across three separate biomes: the western slopes of the Andes Mountains, the Atacama Desert, and the Pacific Ocean. then we head back to Europe for two utterly bizarre happenings involving dancing. the first, the Bal des Ardents sees the king of France and five nobles perform a dance...

folks, we're back with more weird, interesting, neat, and wild shit from the Middle Ages. this time, we explore the numerous Medieval inventions of Imperial China such as the compass, gunpowder, printing, and much more. we discuss why Imperial China was able to foster such innovation and why it fell off in the 15th century. then we briefly discuss the fascinating Ming Treasure Voyages of 1405-1433 and the meteoric rise of the Mongol Empire, which went from disunited steppe horse archers to...

folks, we're back on our weird Medieval shit with part 4 in our series. this time, we focus on the amazing fact that Medieval Norse and Polynesian peoples crossed both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans to reach the Americas hundreds of years before Christopher Columbus was even born and how modern science has confirmed these events that were once thought to be outright fabrications. these are truly some of the greatest accomplishments in human history and they happened in the Middle Ages. then,...

as we said on the last episode, there's no new show this week due to travel and timing and all that, so we're unlocking a bonus episode from the Patreon for all listeners. if you're interested, this is the perfect excuse to subscribe at patreon.com/wnsdpod. normally we don't do episodes based on a short series of tweets but sometimes you find a guy who believes that the clitoris was invented by feminists in the 1960's and that no one before that time ever went down on a woman and you just...

folks, we couldn't do a series on weird Medieval shit without talking about our favorite weird Medieval little guys who show up in marginalia of illuminated manuscripts from the era. and to do so, we brought on Olivia Swarthout, aka at Weird Medieval on twitter, to help us out. we discuss why humans love to think up and draw weird little guys, what it means, and why they're still so fascinating to us today. then, in the last half of the episode, we each do a tier list, ranking 25 weird little...

we're back with the second episode of our Weird Medieval series and this time we're talking about space. in recorded history, only eight possible supernovae within the Milky Way have ever been witnessed by direct observation, and three of them occurred during the Middle Ages. we talk about those supernovae, what made them special, and how one was finally confirmed as a supernova just three years ago! then we turn to the Roman Catholic Church and remark on how weird it is that the Church not...

folks, we've started a new series and this one is all about Weird Medieval shit. the Middle Ages were an incredibly fascinating time and we want to celebrate and emphasize that by looking at the events, people, and things that make you go, "damn that's wild." we're going to cover stuff from all across the entire one-thousand-year Medieval era and on every continent save Antarctica. in this first part, we take a look at the following three events: that time Justinian I sent two monks to China...

we finish up our intermittent series on proto-nationalism and nationalism by discussing the modern concept of tradwives, or women who endorse a so-called traditionalist perspective and aesthetic online, either out of pure belief or as a grift. and to do so, we interview Dr. Lauren Hill Griffin, a religious studies, nationalism, technology, and politics professor at Louisiana State University. we discuss whether the tradwife "movement" is authentic or just a cash grab, how it ties into broader...

we have had a lot of great interviews lately and that means we haven't had much time to answer the backlog of patron questions we have, so we decided to do a mailbag. we answer questions ranging from Robin Hood's death to Silk Road safety to experimental archaeology to a counterfactual about capitalism and the Reformation and much more. enjoy!

folks, things are getting worse everywhere but especially on the internet and so we decided to go to an expert to discuss how modern things are getting shittier all the time: author, blogger, and creator of the neologism "enshittification" joins the show to talk about why the modern world seems to be getting worse with every passing day, whether people in the Middle Ages felt the same way about their situation, whether this is like the Fall of the Roman Empire, and bad French translations....

this time, Luke and Eleanor welcome special guest November, co-host of the Trashfuture, Well There's Your Problem, and Kill James Bond podcasts to the show to talk about the German Peasants War, which turns 500 this year. we talk about the attempted radical Reformation, the magisterial reaction, Martin Luther's horrified response, and why the lords and nobles can partake in extreme forms of violence and war crimes while their peasant underlings are forbidden from doing so. check it out

this week, we're continuing our series on proto-nationalism and nationalism by talking to Dr. Rachel Moss about the ways nostalgia is used for evil and, specifically, how false nostalgia for a Middle Ages that didn't exist fuels modern nationalism. we talk about how rose-tinted glasses are used to paint a false picture of the Medieval era, how the same feelings of both good and bad nostalgia similarly affected Medieval people, and modern reactionaries who are really just looking for a new...

This week, we welcome Dr. Bradley Onishi, co-host of the Straight White American Jesus podcast, onto the show as part of our series on proto-nationalism in the Middle Ages. As we promised earlier this month, we had some guests lined up to discuss other aspects of proto-nationalism and nationalism with us and this is the first of those interviews. Brad joins us to discuss the problem of Christian nationalism, which is on the rise in the world right now but has its roots in the Middle Ages. We...

this time, we return to our occasional series on Medieval women, where we look at the lives and times of ladies who were able to rise to positions of power and esteem despite the extremely patriarchal nature of the Middle Ages. we have previously done these for the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene and for Hildegard of Bingen and Eleanor of Aquitaine. but now we turn to the Mediterranean and the Early Middle Ages to find our two remarkable women: Byzantine Empress Theodora and Lombardi Queen...

150th episode wooooo! this time, we continue our miniseries on what we're calling Proto-nationalism in the Middle Ages by talking about two very big materialist reasons why they couldn't really have nationalism back then: malleable borders and dynastic rulership. Medieval borders were porous, light-enforced at best, and changed overnight based on the confusing, overlapping rights that various rulers had over a plot of land. rulership, meanwhile, was personalized and heavily influenced by...

nationalism is, unfortunately, once again on the rise in the modern day and while you might think that it has very little to do with the Middle Ages, you'd be wrong. because while the nationalism we see today didn't exist in the same form back then, the roots of it began to take hold even back then in the form of religious discrimination and of othering people who look or act differently. further, the nationalism that we experience today popped up in the 19th century and its loudest...

it's our first episode of the new year but we're just not ready to move on quite yet, so we're taking a look back at 2023 and then taking a little peak ahead into 2024. we talk about Medieval news and studies from last year, review a little of what happened on the podcast, and talk about some of our favorite movies, TV shows, books, etc. then, we set our sights on the year ahead and close our with some predictions for 2024 and even our New Year's resolutions. enjoy!

hello listeners! what you're about to hear is one of our patron-exclusive bonus episodes from March 2023, the first of our seven part book club series on Dante's Inferno. in it, we introduce Dante Alighieri's masterwork, The Inferno, by discussing the author's life, the background of Medieval Italian city-states, the Guelph-Ghibelline conflict, and more meta details about the book. we talk about The Inferno's importance, both as a work of fiction and as a surviving Medieval text, Dante's...

folks, it's the holidays and so we decided to post some prompts on twitter and bluesky and answer some questions about history, life, and culture from the general audience. we cover everything from Chinese feudalism to the Panera lemonade that kills you to counterfactuals on how imperial Italy could've become a world superpower and whether there was a Medieval concept of coolness analogous to what we have today. check it out, it's a ton of fun and we hope you'll like it. finally, we'd like...

folks, we've got podcaster, historian, dad-aficionado, and friend of the show Patrick Wyman back on the show to talk about dad culture, what it means to be a dad as opposed to just a father, Medieval dads, dad-coded behavior, and much more. this is Patrick's 3rd appearance on the show and we love to have him on. you can check out his podcasts, the Fall of Rome, Tides of History, and the Pursuit of Dadliness, wherever you get your podcasts.

this time, we take a dive into the backlog of questions from our patrons and answer a few of them. we tackle everything from how to explain the Middle Ages to a 5 year old, to how bad was Henry VIII really to Eleanor Rykener and even who was the worst person in the Middle Ages. we cover 11 questions in total and it's a lot of fun, enjoy! This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at...

as you may have heard, the Princes in the Tower are in the news again, 540 years after their supposed deaths. recently, Philippa Langley, who famously help find Richard III's body in a parking lot back in 2012, hosted a television special in the UK which alleged a new theory about the Princes in the Tower: they survived and later returned to the island in attempts to take back the throne. as you may recall from our series on the Wars of the Roses, the historical consensus is that the young...

folks, we're finally doing a review of Ridley Scott's 2021 Medieval history film, The Last Duel, a film that asks the question: what if Ridley Scott just didn't do all the stuff he's known for and instead made an intimate portrait of a Medieval soap opera in the style of Rashomon that revolves around both an obscure land dispute based on manorial custom and a lengthy legal proceeding. it is a surprisingly well done film based on the director and subject matter and we're glad you get to...